I love this heading. This is the core stuff of what FreeFall is all about. Let me emphasize the science and state of the art techniques we use in FreeFall and why. In BodyTalk and The Life Sciences, we realize that the constrictions in your body are really a defense against feeling and releasing a variety of different feelings. The immobility of your body stems from deep-seated suppression of such expression and the resulting formation of emotional neuropeptides creates attachment to tissues and drastically impedes their function. Dr. Candice Pert discovered the receptor structure on the surface of a cell that allows it to admit outside substances, such as nutrients and hormones. Malfunctions in the operation of cell receptors can cause disease. Dr. Pert explains that neuropeptides and their receptors are the biochemicals of emotions, carrying information in a vast network linking the material world of molecules with the non-material world of the psyche. These are all over, not just the brain but different parts of the body, including the heart and the vessels around the heart. [Candace Pert-Molecules of Emotion] The musculature of the heart and the connective tissue that is taking on neuropeptides (energy that’s being produced from strong emotions), holds them in a very strong inhibitory vortex, or “false heart’. FreeFall uses a, state of the art practice of Advanced Bioenergetics – BodyGenics, to really mobilize the neuropeptides and catalyze our wiring and get it going. In our work, we directly address the structural integrity of the cells and observe the collective contributions that the neuropeptides are communicating to our nervous system. With this technique, our awareness can release the neuropeptides from the cells, and let go. Neuropeptides only stay alive when they’re attached to cells. Now the lymphatic system will take them away, send them out through the kidneys. By clearing that away, it enables the heart-brain to function normally, keeping harmony in the body. Not only in the physiological functions, but also in the psychological and emotional functions including all the factors of being able to relate to yourself and all the people around you. As the repressed natural emotions emerge, the FreeFall participant often begins to realize that these patterns inhibit their capacity for spontaneity and creativity in self-expression. They begin to understand that as these defenses became chronic, so have the muscular patterns in their body. These defenses affect their emotional well-being by decreasing energy level and restricting the capacity for genuine self- expression in relationships; they are not free enough in their body to feel joy, happiness, love, sadness, fear, sensuality and anger. When heart, mind and emotions are in energetic alignment and cooperation, there is harmony, emotional stability and optimal...

1. Understand your own body “How the cells know what to do, where to go, and why do they do it in the first place? For the purpose to work with individual people, The BodyTalk System uses the term: “Innate Wisdom”. This innate wisdom contains the information and intelligence necessary for the functioning of our bodies. As such, he Innate Wisdom influences the exploration of health and growth in our lives.” 2. Take up yoga. There’s a reason so many yogis are calmer and healthier people. Practicing yoga, much like receiving a BodyTalk session, helps draw energy out of your restless mind and into your heart complex and your body. It heightens awareness such that you become more attuned to the clues your body gives about what’s ailing you and how you can heal yourself. The two disciplines have a lot in common, in their intentions and outcomes. Actually BodyTalk has a strong base in the Advaita Vedanta philosophy. A shared sensibility pervades BodyTalk and yoga, attracting people who are curious about the intersection of physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. More practically speaking, yoga stretches and activates connective tissue, capillaries, veins, meridians and chakras throughout the body, which helps regulate the flow of many levels of communication. We have also heard about so many benefits of meditation… 3. … and meditation. Though meditation is usually recognized as a largely spiritual practice, it also has many health benefits. The yoga and meditation techniques are being implemented in management of life threatening diseases; in transformation of molecular and genetic structure; in reversal of mental illnesses, in accelerated learning programs, in perceptions and communications beyond the physical, in solving problems and atomic and nuclear physics; in gaining better ecological understanding; in management of lifestyle and future world problems. Some benefits of meditation are: It lowers oxygen consumption. It decreases respiratory rate. It increases blood flow and slows the heart rate. Increases exercise tolerance in heart patients. Leads to a deeper level of relaxation. Good for people with high blood pressure as it brings the B.P. to normal. Reduces anxiety attacks by lowering the levels of blood lactate. Decreases muscle tension (any pain due to tension) and headaches. Builds self-confidence. It increases serotonin production which influences mood and behaviour. Low levels of serotonin are associated with depression, obesity, insomnia and headaches. Helps in chronic diseases like allergies , arthritis etc. Reduces Pre- menstrual Syndrome. Helps in post-operative healing. Enhances the immune system. Research has revealed that meditation increases activity of ‘natural-killer cells’, which kill bacteria and cancer cells. Also reduces activity of viruses and emotional distress. 4. Stop blaming people. “A foundational concept in acupuncture and in BodyTalk is the Yin-Yang theory. An oversimplification of Yin-Yang theory is that...

Science is slowly shedding light on what is now being called the Microbiome: the 100 trillion microbes that live on and within us. And contrary to popular opinion, it seems these microbes don’t threaten us but instead, offer vital help with our basic physiological processes. As new data is being collected, we now know that our Body’s ecosystem includes several delicate and complex symbiotic relationships with over a 100 trillion microbes. Recent research suggests that this small universe of microbes consists of what is called commensals (harmless freeloaders), mutualists (favor traders), and only in the tiniest amount, pathogens. It appears that this microbial community does far more good than harm and the ‘services rendered’ are proving to be somewhat remarkable and shocking. This microbial ecosystem also referred to as the microbiome is essential to maintaining the complex coordination of health and homeostasis in the body. As we dive deeper, we are afforded a more expansive view of what health really means. Take our mood for example, the ‘source’ of one’s mood has long been a mystery to science. Why are some people more uptight than others? Why do we feel grumpy and low sometimes? Although it would be nice if we could blame our foul mood on our partner’s shortcomings, recent discoveries suggest otherwise (1). Our gut bacteria play key roles in the manufacturing of some neurotransmitters such as serotonin (contributes to feelings of well-being and happiness), some enzymes, vitamins, and some signaling molecules that influence the immune and metabolic systems. Some of which play a role in regulating stress levels and, surprisingly enough, even temperament. When the microbes from easy-going, adventurous mice were transplanted into the guts of anxious, timid mice, they became more adventurous (1). Who knew the tiny critters that take up shelter in our gut are the answer to our mood. The last few years have seen a major paradigm shift in our understanding of the role of microbes in our health. This change is akin to the shock when watching the last few minutes of a movie, when it hits you that the villain is really the good guy, and the protagonist you have been rooting for is the evil schemer. From the time we were infants, we were warned about the dangers of “germs”, things that would make us sick. We may have been vaccinated to protect us against terrible viruses. We may have suffered with colds and flus caused by these germs. We may have grown up with antibacterial wipes and other products to scrub our homes clean from these invisible but deadly bugs. We may have learned in school about even deadlier diseases of the past – the bubonic plague in the...

The scariest thing about FreeFall, for many people, may be looking at themselves naked in a full-length mirror! I decided to explore a few ideas around “Mirroring” and integrate my own process of reflection and experience as a FreeFall student (always a student!) and an Instructor Trainee. My invitation to you, when reading this article is to just flow through some concepts that I have found through my studies. Here and there I will shoot out some questions. Not that they need to be answered. They are just questions. And here are my first questions: Are you embarrassed to look at yourself naked? Are you embarrassed if people look at you when you are naked? NeuroScience recognizes that all the sensory information we receive come to us through our 5 senses but before their actual process in specific areas of the brain they will be filtered by our beliefs, attitudes, expectations and attachments. So that we are not experiencing the “real world” as it is. We are experiencing what our filters (beliefs, attitudes, expectations, conditionings, etc.) allow us to perceive. Therefore, when we look in the “mirror” of our interactions, either with others or within our selves, we still see through the filters that exist in our conscious and sub-conscious mind. Two contemplations come to me about this concept: first, we should not take everything too seriously, because we are not “looking at true reality anyway. Second, does that mean that in order to “see clearly” we need to get rid of all our filters? Is that even possible? Dr. Alexander Lowen’s (the Language of the Body) teaches that our body mirrors our character. Thus the body can give clues about emotional disturbances. The body can also give clues about how to heal these disturbances. When I breathe into awareness in the Mirror exercise I can experience how certain emotions have become muscle rigidity and inflexibility in my body. The concept of Consciousness of Separation vs Individuation is explained in the Principles of Consciousness class and experienced in Breakthrough and FreeFall classes. We separate ourselves from our own true nature (which is all goodness) when we hold expectations (that are not met) of self and others. We learn to create defensive patterns and coping mechanisms very, very early in life to avoid feeling pain. But, we will be hurting anyway when we deny what we truly are. It is very painful to keep trying hard to “fit in” somewhere, somehow, in the world “out there”. When we deny parts of ourselves we fragment our being – we split body, we split mind and we split heart; our whole being trembles and starts to contract in itself. It feels like...

Extracts from Arnie Cooper interview with Christopher Lane and the Sun’s Magazine Article with the same title. Christopher Lane is not a psychiatrist. But he has been researching the DSM – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – and the process by which new disorders are added to it. What he discovered has made home a critic of much of modern psychiatric theory and practice. Six years ago, he had just published hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England, for which he studied the transition from Victorian psychiatry (out of which psychoanalysis was born), to contemporary psychiatrist, with its intense focus on biomedicine and pharmacology. He was already skeptical about the emergence in 1980 of dozen f new mental disorders in the DSM-III (third edition) and he began to hear from many of his students at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, that were in psychiatric drugs. He got access to APA (American Psychiatric Association) archives and unpublished memos and he was troubled with what he found: evidence of drug-company influence (especially in the promotion of “panic disorder” by the maker of Xanax), questionable research (sometimes involving just one patient), sloppy thinking, dismissal of nonmedical approaches to psychiatric problems, and a degree of inventiveness with term and symptoms that struck him as playing fast and loose with the facts. All of this served as the basis for Lane’s 2007 book, Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, in which he observes that behaviors once understood as natural reactions to one’s environment and upbringing are increasingly seen as innate conditions of brain chemistry, resulting from problematic levels of neurotransmitters, especially serotonin. He suggests that because of the open-ended language in the DSM and the wide range of behaviors it pathologies, anyone who is shy – as he was as a teenager – now risks being diagnosed as mentally ill. Lane has written 3 other books about the Victorian Era. He is editor of the anthology The Psychoanalysis of Race, and coeditor of Homosexuality and psychoanalysis he currently writes for the Huffington post and has a popular blog for psychology called side effects. Cooper: Why should the average person care about the DSM? The DSM is widely regarded as the bible of psychiatric diagnosis. Its authority extends not only to this country’s schools, prisons, court system and health insurance industry. It is highly influential in defining mental illness. Since the first DSM in 1952, which had 106 disorders, the number has almost tripled. Are we getting sicker, or is something else at play? The way psychiatrists define mental illness has itself changed radically. The first two editions of the DSM focused on observable traits and behaviors in patients, which...

Dr. Laura Stuve, a Certified BodyTalk Instructor, practitioner, and PhD Molecular Biologist and geneticist, performed a chronic pain study, along with Janet Galipo, Senior BodyTalk Instructor, and 6 other American BodyTalk practitioners. The study was performed using distance sessions only, targeting chronic pain, in individuals who had never received ANY BodyTalk before this study. These conditions were established to comply with the National Institute of Health, and followed their guidelines using a randomized control trial, single blinded. In order to control for the placebo effect, keeping NIH grant credibility as the guideline, the distance sessions were established as the blinding effect. Assessments were done by Self Assessments using PROMIS, also NIH guidelines. The subjects were any individuals who had chronic pain, on a pain scale from 0 – 10, 0 being no pain and 10 being excruciating, the rating had to be more that 4. The conditions were that all subjects had to have all correspondance done remotely, and all sessions were distance. This meant that all subjects corresponded only via phone or through the website. The subjects were not allowed to use any other CAM (Complimentary Alternative Medicine) modalities for the duration of the 9 week study. The only exclusions were that subjects had to be 18 and older and could not be on opiate based pain medications. The results were undeniably astounding! Measurements were recorded by statistician, Dr. Honghu Liu, PhD, a professor at UCLA’s School of Medicine who is actively teaching clinical study design and who helped developed the PROMIS initiative. The control group, (who DID NOT receive BodyTalk sessions), reported a 15.4% improvement, while the study group, (who DID received sessions), reported a 70.4% improvement. When the statistical data was analysed, a significant value will always measure under 0.05. The lower the value, the greater the significance of improvement. The data showed: For Pain Level 0.0074 For Pain Impact 0.0493 For Anxiety 0.0025 For Depression 0.0321 For Anger 0.0061 For Fatigue 0.0333 After the study was over, all participants were asked which group they thought they were in. Only 1 person from the control group thought they were in the study group. However, nearly all of the participants in the study group thought they were receiving BodyTalk sessions. I am thrilled and truly inspired by the work that Dr. Laura Stuve, Dr. Janet Galipo, and the American practitioners created. Please let others know about this data. If these are the results using distance sessions, one can only imagine the results globally! Spread the news! BodyTalk clinically demonstrates significant improvement! To schedule a BT session with Myriam, which includes all the Advanced BodyTalk Techniques and the multidisciplinary and intuitive approach of PaRama BodyTalk, please call (760)...